New blood test is 92% accurate at detecting signs of prostate cancer, study finds
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New blood test is 92% accurate at detecting signs of prostate cancer and could save thousands of men from painful biopsies or MRI scans, study finds
- A new blood test has achieved much better accuracy than the PSA test
- When the same men received a PSA test, the positive results were only 14% accurate
A blood test can detect prostate cancer with more than 90% accuracy, study finds.
Men who visit their GP with symptoms, such as straining to urinate, have a blood test called a PSA test.
But this is inaccurate, meaning thousands of men are being wrongly told they may have prostate cancer and may be sent for a painful biopsy or MRI unnecessarily.
A new blood test has achieved much better accuracy – yielding positive results that are 92% accurate when tested on 147 men. When the same men took the standard PSA test, their positive results were only 14% accurate. The method was developed by a spin-off company from former Oxford University scientists. It looks for changes in immune cells in the blood, which signal changes in gene activity seen in the early stages of cancer.
Pictured: blood test (file photo). A new blood test has achieved much better accuracy than the PSA test – yielding positive results that are 92% accurate when tested on 147 men
Professor Dmitry Pshezhetskiy, from the University of East Anglia, lead author of the test study, said: “Only around a quarter of people who have a prostate biopsy because of a high PSA have prostate cancer.”
Most of the 147 men in the study tested positive for PSA, a type of protein that comes from the prostate. About a third had prostate cancer.
The new test still looks for PSA, but incorporates a method called EpiSwitch to look for changes in immune cells caused by cancer-related alterations in five genes.
Pictured: prostate cancer cell. The method was developed by a spin-off company from former Oxford University scientists. It looks for changes in immune cells in the blood, which signal changes in gene activity seen in the early stages of cancer
The combined control, called the PSE test, was 94% accurate for negative results. This means fewer men are being falsely reassured that they don’t have prostate cancer.
It’s unclear how well this would work to screen healthy men for early prostate cancers in the same way that mammograms check a woman’s breast cancer risk. The results were published in the journal Cancers.